


Keeper and Witness

by megancrtr



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 13:44:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9184084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megancrtr/pseuds/megancrtr
Summary: Karl Fitzgerald, the GM, introduces her to Kent without much fuss, because she isn’t there to be a fuss. He goes, “This is your Keeper,” and that is that.





	

 

 

Her years become bonded to Kent’s the moment he signs his name on the contract, three-year, entry-level with a two-way clause.

From that moment on, it’s her job to protect Kent. 

Karl Fitzgerald, the GM, introduces her to Kent without much fuss, because she isn’t there to be a fuss. He goes, “This is your Keeper,” and that is that. Kent looks directly at her for a moment and then nods, without a hint of wide-eyedness that non-legacy players usually give her. 

Every player has someone like her. They stay hovering between the realm of the humans and the place where they come from. They are solid when someone looks directly at them, with faces and eyes and bodies with limbs, but otherwise, they are merely shadows, dark changes in the light. 

She spends most of her time picking apart the curses hurled Kent’s way, stepping in front of Kent to take the ill tidings in her hands and redirect their intent away. 

The curses are usually idle thoughts, thrown Kent’s way. Normally humans don't feel the curses, because usually there are not enough. But there are enough every day for players to feel, to be affected by. On game days it is worse. There are chants in the stadium and targeted thoughts from behind television screens, and she must protect Kent against them all. 

It is her first game on the ice, and she does the same as she does off the ice. She is a dark shadow that moves without anyone really noticing. It is harder to protect him now. Curses fly from the onlookers and from players and coaches, but she works hard and fast. 

She is strong. 

When a player on the opposite team drops their gloves at Kent, swings at Kent, hits him, she wastes no time going after their Keeper. She knows that is the weakest part of the player. The Keeper she is after hardens into its corporeal form as soon as they lock eyes on one another. She does as well. 

She is strong. 

The Keeper cries and shouts, and she slams into him with the curses of old, and he vanishes with a scream, as if he fell into the sun. 

The player goes down too, with a shout and a sob. The crowd cannot see the damage of his soul, half of it sacrificed to the plane where she comes from. But she can see the ruins. She can see the blood that hangs uneasily in the air, the shredded edges of the soul rising and falling with every breath. 

The crowd only knows that something horrible has happened. Something deserving, she believes. No one goes after her charge. She hears the announcer rumble on after the chaos has settled. He tells the crowd what has happened. That Kent’s Keeper, her, has defeated the other player’s Keeper. 

She is strong. 

She goes back to Kent, and he stares at her, her body settling down into a form he can see. She wonders what she looks like to him. He mutters thank you, too soft for anyone else to hear, but because she is his Keeper, holds a part of his soul that ties them together, she hears it.

Her back straightens, and she glides in front of Kent to protect him again as they carry off the player, who can’t stand. Who can barely breathe, because she ripped the part of the soul the Keeper kept away from him. 

That is the downside to having a Keeper. Even if the player gets their soul back after the season. It is hard, so very hard to play with half your soul.

If there weren't any contracts, she would get to keep all the corners of souls she captures until Kent tells her to let them go. 

Players do not go after Kent very often after that. The ones that do, are not very good and do not have Keepers or they think their Keeper will overpower her. But she has worked for decades and centuries, and she knows curses of old. She is also terrified, so terrified of tearing apart her charge whose soul she has learned is not healthy, is not quite all there. 

She wonders if he had a Keeper before her. 

Some of them do. Some of the players in Major Juniors. But it is rare. It requires money or old, old magic. When it happens that way, usually the contract is not written, but rather clumsily stated without a clause to return souls. 

Kent ignores her most of the time. It is expected and she does not complain, but she wants to ask him what happened to that corner of his soul. 

She is with Kent all the time. When he laughs with other players and smiles to the press. 

But she is also there when Kent spends extra hours on the ice and when he stares hard into a wall as a call goes to voicemail again and again. She is there when he drinks and staggers and when the curses she has to defend Kent against are his own. 

She is there when he backs another boy against a door and sucks him off. She is there as silent witness when Kent leaves before the night is over, his soul freshly cut up and dripping little drops of blood. 

She realizes what has happened to his soul when he goes to see another boy, one who does not yet play in the NHL, but who has a Keeper. 

She sees Kent’s soul reach for the boy that does not deserve him. She goes after the other Keeper with rage and anger in her heart. She stops only when Kent shouts for her to. 

The other Keeper cowards beneath the curses behind her lips, the missing part of Kent’s soul clutched desperately between the Keeper’s hands. 

She draws away when Kent calls her again. 

She wonders if the boy will ever tell his Keeper to give Kent back the corner of his soul. 

If he doesn’t, she will take it back from him the moment he steps back on the ice. 

She is Kent’s Keeper and that is part of his soul.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading this odd little piece. | [tumblr](https://megancrtr.tumblr.com/).


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